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  • WHERE I WORK

Flying low and slow over endangered whales

US federal biologist Christin Khan embraces risk above the Atlantic Ocean to monitor a rare species.
  1. Madeline Bodin

    1. Madeline Bodin is a freelance writer in Vermont.

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A researcher in an airplane looks for North Atlantic right whales

Christin Khan is a fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at its Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Credit: Allison Henry/NOAA/NEFSC

I am fortunate to spend many of my work days in a small aeroplane with two other scientists and two pilots searching for North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). When we spot one, we fly overhead and photograph it from above. That angle lets us identify individual whales, which is important in a species this rare: there are thought to be only 409 animals left, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium (NARWC), a data-sharing group.

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Nature 582, 600 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01814-7

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